1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to amusement park rides and passenger restraints in such rides and other implementations, and, more particularly, to a lap bar assembly for an amusement park ride providing locking in both a ride or down position and in a released or up position to provide lap bar and grab bar functionality in an automated manner.
2. Relevant Background
Passenger restraints such as lap bars are used throughout the amusement park industry to safely and securely restrain passengers within a seat of a vehicle. For example, many amusement park rides provide themed rides in which vehicles ride along on one or more tracks, and the passengers are restrained from standing up or leaving the vehicle by a lap bar that is positioned across their laps or provided over their shoulders as an overhead or similar restraint. During loading, the lap bar is typically positioned against the passenger by a ride operator that is pressing a foot lever to allow adjustment of the position of the lap bar relative to the passengers. Once in position, the operator releases the foot lever or pedal to lock the lap bar in this ride or down position. When the ride is over, the vehicle may pass over a portion of the track with a release mechanism causing the lap bar to become unlocked from the ride position. The lap bar then may spring to an open or up position.
There are a number of concerns with these conventional lap bar assemblies including the fact that these assemblies only lock in the ride or down position and not in the up position. In other words, existing lap bar assemblies are not useful as supports or grab bars during loading and unloading and will typically freely move when grabbed by a passenger for support, which can cause the passenger to lose balance or the bar to move quickly downward toward other passengers. Additionally, conventional lap bars typically only provide one locking position that is set manually by the ride operator, and this one-size-fits-all approach may make it difficult for one lap bar to be used for multiple passengers of differing size as the bar may only be positioned against or near the largest passenger.
Guest positioning and restraint systems have utilized a variety of modes of locking the lap bar such as providing a friction lock device. Friction locks create a large amount of wear on the locking rod as they are actuated, and this wear can require ongoing or frequent adjustment to ensure the mechanism is still locking per the design intent. Some existing friction lock designs require multiple linkages with complex parts and complexity. Another disadvantage of some friction lock designs is that the lap bar can be forced open. The lap bar can be pushed with enough force such that the frictional force is overcome, which opens the lap bar. Grease, dirt, and/or lubricants on the locking rod can decrease the force required to open the lap bar or even disable the lock entirely. If multiple patrons are restrained under a single lap bar, the load per patron to overcome the frictional lock and release the lap bar decreases, e.g., if the force were 200 pounds, two passengers would have to apply 100 pounds each to release the lap bar. Further, friction locks begin working as soon as the lap bar is lowered. This may be an undesirable effect if the operator wants to ensure the lap bar is locked at a certain distance or space relative to the passengers.
Some passenger restraint systems using ratchet systems have been developed, but these have not been widely adopted for a number of reasons. For example, ratchet-based restraint systems are generally not automated but instead require a passenger sitting in a vehicle seat to manually pull and hold a lever out such that the pawls are backed off the ratchet wheel. Only in response to such passenger/operator manual positioning can the lap bar be released. However, due to the environmental conditions found in a theme or amusement park and their rides, it is typically preferred that the passengers sitting in the vehicle seat cannot manually or otherwise unlock the restraint device, e.g., cannot raise the lap bar during the ride or too early at the station. It is also advantageous in some cases that the unlocking of the restraint, releasing of the lap bar, and locking in an uplock or raised position are provided automatically (or without operator or passenger intervention), and ratchet-based passenger restraints have not provided such functionality.